Word: chicago
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He wields near imperial power, and most of Chicago would have it no other way. Two years ago, Richard Daley was re-elected to his fifth term with 79% of the vote. His annual budgets are routinely passed with only token opposition. He controls public housing, public schools and the city council. He is cozy with Big Business, is a master at the ward politics of fixing streetlights, and he speaks with a blunt, blue-collar brio that Chicagoans find endearing. "There's never been a [U.S.] mayor, including his dad, who had this much power," says Paul Green...
From the days of Daley's legendary father, sometimes known as Richard the First, Chicago's national reputation as a bare-knuckle city of backroom deals by the Democratic faithful and their labor-union allies has always held a lot of truth. But Daley has professionalized the city by hiring skilled managers and burnished its business-friendly image by strengthening connections to global firms like Boeing, which relocated its headquarters to town, and to white-shoe industries like banking, financial services...
...Best Big City Mayors Chicago: Richard DaleyAtlanta: Shirley FranklinBaltimore: Martin O'MalleyDenver: John HickenlooperNew York: Michael BloombergHonorable Mention: Gavin Newsom / San Francisco
...Best Big City Mayors Chicago: Richard DaleyAtlanta: Shirley FranklinBaltimore: Martin O'MalleyDenver: John HickenlooperNew York: Michael BloombergHonorable Mention: Gavin Newsom / San Francisco
...rebels. Then again, so have the worst. Fiorello LaGuardia, who ruled New York from 1934 to '45, besides reforming and rebuilding his city, was famous for smashing slot machines with a sledgehammer and reading the comics to children over the radio during a newspaper strike. On the other hand, Chicago's William (Big Bill) Thompson, first elected in 1915, kept a picture of his good buddy Al Capone on his office wall and once conducted a debate between himself and two white rats, which he placed onstage to represent his political opponents...